The little I have is yours: another breath prayer

19
Dec

Aka When all you have to offer is a tolerance for pain, a coupla college credits, and a top-notch brain

Lest anyone think I’m trying to pass off the title of this post as my own, I hope you recognized it from Hamilton.

I’m trying to keep going with these breath prayers but I gotta tell you — it’s a challenge. There’s a lot of internal arguing with God in my head, and a lot of frustration with the way things are both on the individual and grand scales. It’s not that I think things are malfunctioning; it’s that I’m not sure the system was designed properly. Arrogant, I know, and I’m not trying to say I could do any better. I’m just here to point out that the way things are ain’t great. Yah, just what you needed to hear. You’re welcome?

Jesus, the little I have is yours.

Right now I don’t feel like I have a lot to offer. In the past, when words have failed me, paint has been the conduit through which I processed all those things that troubled or perplexed. Since these days just about everything trouble and perplexes me, it makes sense to offer these visual prayers in lieu of any analysis I could hope to toss out. So paint it is…

Part of what makes these such difficult times is that the circumstances we find ourselves in have revealed longstanding rifts in our society, as well as deep inequities and discriminatory attitudes, whether that’s about race, age, or status. The people at the helm seem incapable of imagination or compassion, and so let money drive their decisions rather than relying their humanity.

There’s so much pain.

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If you’ve ever heard of the enneagram, you might know some of the numbers that describe different types of motivations that direct our actions. Apparently I’m a seven, and sevens love to have fun…almost to a fault. Sevens try to steer clear of discomfort or pain, and it take a lot of discipline and reflection to stay in an uncomfortable situation. The instinct is to change the subject, make light of it, or evacuate the area. I’ve gotten better with practice, but there are still times when I have to work hard to stay present in the midst of conflict or discomfort. I’m trying hard to see and hear about the hardships people are facing. I’m very aware that there’s no guarantee these hardships won’t become my own.

People are experiencing profound pain, whether that’s because they’ve had to say goodbye to a loved one from a distance, or their livelihood is in jeopardy, or their child is struggling, or they’re deeply lonely. There’s any number of options for pain right now, and the only thing I can think to hope that people would feel God’s love in the midst of it, feel His/Her peace and buoying presence even in the darkness.

My prayer is that we would see each other’s pain and not look away. That we would bear each other’s burdens and bear witness to each other’s suffering. And then we’d strive to make changes to our systems so there are fewer cracks for people to fall through.

This all stems from the breath prayers Osheta Moore offered this summer. Click here for an intro

Breath prayers: a series

2
Aug

I’ve been working on something for the last few months, during this challenging time, when we’re facing situations and challenges, awakenings and reckonings, an author and pastor introduced a series of morning breath prayers. That pastor’s name is Osheta Moore, and she is a lovely human who wrote Shalom Sistas, and preaches at Woodland Hills and Roots Covenant, among other places.

While facing a pandemic of an illness that zeroes in on the lungs, breath prayers seemed keenly appropriate. That was In late March/ April. Then at the end of May in Minneapolis a police office knelt on the neck of George Floyd and killed him. And the outrage at this, and the national reckoning with institutions that are set up to keep people down that followed is making people take a hard look at the ways their silence — my silence — has supported racism.

All that to say, it’s been a good time for breath prayers.

I thought I’d spread them out over the month of August, a time when the summer weather in Minnesota usually reaches its peak. Right now there’s a fever pitch of stress surrounding school’s plans for fall and how people are going to support their kids’ education, especially in this time of pandemic. It’s hard to know what the right decision is, and there’s not one cookie-cutter answer for every family, for every child. So how do we even start to pray about it?

Again, it’s a good time for breath prayers.

The cover of my handmade journal that began life as a box of crackers headed for the recycling bin.

A breath prayer is so simple, with the goal of giving our busy minds time to rest and time to pause. Almost a form of meditation, you just focus on a simple phrase, usually one that is short and can be said in one inhale or one exhale. Maybe the two portions work together. Maybe it’s longer and takes two breathes to complete, o pne phrase used on the inhale, one used with the exhale. The idea though is that it’s short enough to mimic our breathing, and can slow our breathing and slow our racing minds.

This post will probably be one of the longer of the series. I hope to share one or two per week during August. I will try to be clear which prayers are from Osheta and which ones are from me, because I think it’s important to give Osheta credit for these beautiful prayers and for the inspiration for this journal. For example, today’s prayer is from Osheta.

Today’s prayer: Mother God, distract me with delight.

There are a couple dictionary entries on this page, and a blackout (or whiteout in this case) poem based from a book of poems by Rumi.

The definition of pray: to request or make a request for in a humble, beseeching manner syn plead, petition, appeal, entreat

The poem reads:

God is giving a general introductory lecture.

We hear and read it everywhere, in the field, through the branches.

We’ll never finish studying, yet we’re considering.

Shall I say this with other metaphors? A barn crowded with souls. Quietness served around a table. Two people talk along a road that’s paved with words.

Mother God / distract us with delight.

The next page simply says breathe in / breathe out

As I use these prayers I try to focus on that prayer’s thought throughout the day, paying attention to where it pops up or how I feel in relation to it. I think God shows us things this way, even if it’s just showing us something more about ourselves.

And that’s it! I hope you’ll enjoy this series, and I’d love to hear what kinds of prayer are meaningful to you. Feel free to leave a comment and share with friends who might find this helpful.

Create-along art journal page: taking our emotional temperature

10
Jul

Today’s prompt and step by step is all about taking our own emotional temperature and checking in with ourselves.

As we begin working, consider how you’re feeling today. If you’d like to expand it, you can think about how you’ve been feeling lately, say in the past few months or so.

I mean it, it took soooooooo loooooooong. So what was my emotional temperature at that time?

Impatient. My emotional temperature was impatient. We sat there waiting our turn for such a long time I was starting to wonder if I should have packed a lunch and overnight bag. Glad I don’t have to go through that very often.

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Now that we’ve got our idea and focus for this page, I’ll show you where we’re headed, but keep in mind that every person’s page will look different. We are different people, we’ve been through different things, and we’re in different places emotionally. Please do everything you can to release any expectations of what your page “should” look like and allow it to develop naturally. Try to affirm your own willingness to show up and take a risk in doing this, and in so doing, know there’s no point in comparing your page to anyone else’s page. They are not you! Of course their page will be different from yours.

Art journaling is all about the process and reflection as you create. The end result is a byproduct.

Supplies

White paint
Glue
A couple papers that have a pattern on them. You can use old book pages, receipts, the insides of envelopes, scrapbook papers, sheet music, whatever grabs your fancy.
A couple tubes of paint in colors you’re drawn to.
Masking tape or patterned tape (washi tape).

Step by step

First, start by gluing down some torn bits of paper. Keep one portion in reserve.

Next, scrape a thin coat of white paint over your page. This will calm down the print of your patterned papers and give us a good base for our next layers.

The next thing you’ll do is plan to reserve a place on your page.

The flap of paper will go over how you feel internally, in contrast with how you appear to feel externally. I picked a mix of blue and purple, in part because I knew they’d be very different than the colors on the main part of my page. Later I added some scribbles with colored pencils.

Now, pick a couple paint colors that fit the external mood you’re trying to work with and put some of those on your page. (Avoid the spot you set aside, since you’ll be putting a flap of paper over that section.) You can use a paintbrush, your fingers, an old gift card, whatever you’d like. I chose some calm, pretty neutral colors and just scraped them on with a palette knife.

I’ve chosen to do one more thin layer of white. I used a brayer, a tool often used in print making. I like the effect it gives, but a thin layer of white scraped with a gift card will work as well.

Did somebody mention a flap?? It’s about time to put that on our page.

You can simply use a little masking tape (washi tape if you have it) on one side to make a hinge.

Finally, I always like to add a brief thought, a quote, or some journaling to my pages. You can put this under the flap to maintain some privacy, or add it anywhere on your page.

Here’s my end result:

If you decide to give this a try, good luck and I’d love to see what you make! Send me a pic or tag me online.

Starting from nowhere but not starting alone: a highspeed art journal spread

18
Jun

Over on Instagram, my feed is almost exclusively art journaling and art. There are a few family members and friends, of course, but it is really heavily skewed to arty goodness.

One thing I love to watch is process videos. I find it fascinating to see a page go from nothing to full of color and texture. It’s almost like one of those cool nature documentaries that show a flower sprouting out of the ground and blooming.

Flowers like these, for example

In making other videos I’ve discovered I take for-ev-er to complete a spread, even when it’s heavily edited. I’m happy as a little ant, hauling leaf bits back to the hill then heading out for more, but that’s my process. People don’t need to see me hem and haw through the whole thing. But with hyper lapse, we cut out more of that puttering and we get to the end result much more quickly.

So let’s give it a go, shall we? [Edited to add: a couple of the videos are jiggly at first but they quickly calm down. I hoped the hyper-lapse element would help them be smaller files so let’s hope this works.] I’ve got this in a few parts, four I believe. Here’s where we end up after the layers and adding some words:

Here’s video One:

And then Video Two:

https://tclarson.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/img_4393.mov

When I started I really had no idea where I’d end up. I didn’t set out to include a person, and when I got to the middle of it I actually thought it might be good with a simple quote in some of the white space. And it could have worked that way as well. Because I got the inkling to carve out a person, and where she ended up, there was this secondary pocket of color that asked for a second figure of some kind.

Here’s Video Three, where things start to come together:

https://tclarson.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/img_4454.mov

And finally Video Four:

https://tclarson.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/img_4456.mov

You’ll have to tell me what you think. Do you enjoy process videos the way I do?

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Here’s an added challenge for you…

Start.

Start somewhere.

Whether that’s pulling out your yarn, dusting off some old sheet music, trying a new recipe, downloading that design app on your device, it doesn’t matter what your area of focus is, just start one thing. Take one step into your own creative expression. You don’t have to have an end product in mind when you begin. You can enjoy the process of discovery and experimentation.

I promise it gets less daunting the more you do it.

And here’s the thing to know…as you try it, you might very well discover a whole community of other people who are also into that activity, especially if you use social media in a useful way. Explore more hashtags, follow a couple people who are a couple steps ahead of you, and just see where it all leads. It might surprise you. (And keep me in the loop if you do!)

Essential wholehearted Humanness

14
Nov

It can be instinctive to try and make sense of situations, to look for connections between things so we can identify with what’s happening around us.

However, for some people that comes with more difficulty when faced with unfamiliar situations or world views. They might shut out people rather than looking for that point of connection.

It’s important to remember that while there are vast differences in backgrounds and beliefs, there are some characteristics which are universal.

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I have a tutorial up on the Get Messy Art Journal website today, and it’s all focused on living wholeheartedly. Human development theories tell us some of the things which are desired at the core of all people, such as connection, to be known, and to be loved. More recently, Brene Brown has studied what it looks like to live wholeheartedly, and in my mind her work goes hand in hand with the season of ubuntu.

Here are a couple pics from my tutorial on wholeheartedness (and from the past couple weeks)…

Another couple pics not related to the tutorial but circling the idea of ubuntu and our connected humanness.

Seriously, have you been watching the midterm elections here in the US? What’s up with that , meaning with the barriers to people having their registrations purged, with closing polling stations, and with trouble counting the votes?

Bringing it in closer to home, a friend of a friend had an almost unthinkable tragedy happen recently and I just can’t wrap my head around what things must be like for her right now. Working it out in my art journal gives me a good place to focus my thoughts.

The words on the left side say “you are not alone” which I feel is so important when walking through a very dark time. This is a difficult month for our family, with difficult anniversaries and birthdays and mile-markers of those who are no longer with us, and we grieve them deeply. Knowing we are not alone in that grief makes it a fraction easier to bear, and as you know if you’ve ever been there, a fraction is still significant.

Then finally, just a parting thought of love to you. Maybe you need to hear it today, so just know that your presence in the world matters. We should all keep chugging along, doing the next right thing, sharing love with those we come in contact with, and slowly things will change for the better, if only because we have become more wholehearted in how we approach the world.

If you want to see the whole tutorial for the wholehearted page, it’s on the Get Messy site. To see it you need to be a member, which is just fantastic fun. Click here to get started. And as always, thanks for visiting!

Season of story summary and no more alliterations, I mean it

30
Jul

We’ve come to the end of an eight-week season of story in my art journaling adventures, specifically with Get Messy Art Journal community.

It’s been busy!

For most of my pages I avoid using my own image, but I’m trying to incorporate more of these as an exercise in pushing myself.

I took over the Get Messy Art Journal Instagram account for a week and there I walked people through a step by step process of creating a page.

This is the step by step page I made during the IG takeover. This page focused on common themes and characters found in stories.

There I also shared some of the Purple Kitty story with the illustrations I’ve created to go with the story.

More fun at the Fair — Mini donuts and Fair Hair

It was interesting to discover the different brain topics this season brought up. It’s a funny thing about story: so many of our stories are intertwined with those of other people, and it can take some work to figure out how to handle telling that story. What things are for someone else’s business, and what things are for us to share because they were our experience?

While I agree with this quote from Anne Lamott, I’ve been thinking about this from a more positive angle.

Soon I hope to offer some prints of some of these pages, so check back soon for an update!

Here’s a quick video round up of my season of story journal. Hope you enjoy it!

Recap of the Season of Play

29
May

It’s now the end of the sincerely rejuvenating season of Play. I’ve found so much freedom in releasing my expectations and allowing my curiosity to lead me. I didn’t want to worry about how something turned out or if it would be pretty. For this season I wanted to listen to my intuition and allow my curiosity to guide me.

See, when you play, you’re not concerned about something looking right. You’re just in the activity you’re doing. You’re fully present, caught up in the world you’ve created, whether that’s badmitten or baseball, Monopoly or being an imaginary character in a game of pretend. That doesn’t mean you’re relaxed about the activity — some times playing is super intense! — but you’re relaxed about self-evaluating on a micro level.

Adults need play just as much as children do. We connect in totally different ways when we’re playing. There’s something that allow us to see one another differently in play than in other circumstances. We get to know a whole different side of people, we find out the mild-mannered person from the cubicle around the corner is a baller (or the tall guy from marketing is NOT) or someone has a wildly competitive side we never would’ve predicted.

I’ve worked at a place that tried to encourage non-work interaction within the staff. As a part timer, this was difficult because I was already trying to cram a lot of work into a shortened work week. But in hindsight I can understand why these non-work activities were important. They allowed us to know each other better, connect different parts of our personalities in new ways, and form memories together even if it was because we could all look back on the time Bob from shipping and receiving got hit in the face with a bean bag whipped by the killer arm of Glenda from the mail room.

Glenda aside, playing is good for everyone for lots of reasons! It’s definitely been good for me. Here are a few more pics from this season:

Finally we’ll do a quick flip-thru of the two altered books I used this season.

I started with one, which I knew wouldn’t have enough pages, and then added a second book which size I liked quite a bit. I’d try to find one that size again.

In the video below you’ll see that some pages I’ve included in this post and previous ones aren’t in the video. I try to work in the same journals during a season but sometimes I just go bananas and bust out into a different journal without trying to. It can’t be stopped.

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The next season, which starts June 1, is the Season of Story. Of course I’m thrilled and totally tickled with this and the prospect of merging paint and writing. I’ll have more details for you tomorrow or Thursday, but start thinking now about whether you might want to join Get Messy for the season of Story. Even if you don’t mess around with paint much, trying a new creative angle can be really freeing. Painting/art journaling can clear a path for your words to ruminate and have more traction when you return to your keyboard. You can only sign up for a Season of Story pass for about a week (June 1-7), then the window closes. If you know you want to try it out, here’s where you can learn more.

As always, thanks for allowing me to share my journey and my pages with you. I hope there’s something here that inspires you to try something new or take a brave step into the unknown today.

Recap of the Season of Kindness

3
Apr

For the past eight weeks, the focus of Get Messy art community has been Kindness. Each week we receive a list of prompts around that theme, in addition to a tutorial each week. It’s been a good characteristic/value to explore, with many different aspects to consider.

This is the cover I created for the season. I’ve learned not to make these until towards the end of the season because where I am when start the journal and where the season takes me almost certainly are different places.

Here’s my video collection of the Season of Kindness. I did a quick flip through so you could see the entire journal (fyi: there’s no sound). It’s a fun design, with pages nestled inside two sections — it almost looks like I’m showing you two separate journals with the same covers, but it’s actually one journal.

Here are a few of my favorite pages from the season:

Same page as the one above it, but the page with the cup is now open.

This next spread is based off a quote that is said to come from Mother Teresa. The full original goes like this…

People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.

What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway.

If you find sincerity and happiness some may be jealous. Be happy anyway.

The good you do today will also often be forgotten. Do good anyway. Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.

I had the opportunity to do my first tutorial for the membership portion of the Get Messy website. I was excited and nervous but it turned out pretty good! Here’s one photo from the tutorial:

The next couple months of Get Messy are the Season of Play. You know I’m gonna love that one. My goal is to post more pages here more often, instead of a big pileup at the end.

(In case you find yourself intrigued by the whole Get Messy art journaling group, you can find out more on their website.)

As always, thanks so much for letting me share my thoughts and creations with you.

Layman’s theory of convergence (or Why does life get super busy all of a sudden?)

21
Mar

Feast or famine. It’s a common enough phrase used to describe how there are times when there is an overabundance of food, and then times when there’s virtually no food.

This can relate to activity as well, how there are times when your calendar is empty, and then times when you’re totally swamped. If you ignore the fact that some things are just cyclical (schools will always try to cram as many end-of-the-year concerts, assemblies, and events as possible into what? Yes, the end of the year.) it seems like there’s more to it, like some unseen natural cyclical time force makes things work this way, similar to how gravity is a force and it makes things fall down instead of up. (Just go with it, folks. It will make more sense in a minute.)

You could say feast or famine is somewhat related to this weird coincidence, called the frequency illusion, that thing when you learn something new and then all of a sudden you see it everywhere? Yes, that’s a real thing and there are reasons for it. Nice to know you’re not making it up, right?

In another related thread, my family used to talk about what we called the theory of convergence. I’ve now learned this was really a misnomer and the true theory of convergence has to do with the development of societies. In psychology it relates to mob mentality.

We used it in a whole (wrong) different way, but you’d never have known that from us because we were so convincing in our confidence. …So basically we stole the term and changed it entirely.

…As one does.

We swapped out it’s actual meaning and redefined it as this: you can be working your tail off on projects or goals, seeming to get nowhere, and then all of a sudden you’ll have a bunch of breakthrough all at once.

…an alternate meaning was that you might be going along fine and then a bunch of things happen all at once and the only way they are related is that they happen to YOU.

For negative example in a homeownership situation, you might arrive at home to discover your garage door is stuck shut, the water softener has leaked all over the basement and your refrigerator died. No actual reason for any of these things to happen on the same day or time period, except THEORY OF CONVERGENCE.

In a positive light you might have a deadline for a big project you’ve been developing for many months at work, and that deadline just happens to coincide with a great opportunity to volunteer for a big conference when you can demonstrate art journaling to huge crowds, AND it’s all around one of your kids’ birthdays. Just as a hypothetical example.

The THEORY OF CONVERGENCE (albeit the wrong, not scientifically accurate version) — it’s a real thing.

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This is what I’ve been working with for the past month or so, this theory of convergence. It’s been great but pretty busy and you just can’t say yes to all the things, as much as you might want to. So things here had to quiet down for a bit, but I’d love to share a few photos with you about what’s been going on.

Over at Get Messy, we’re still in the season of kindness, so I’ve been creating pages semi-related to that theme.

Today I have a tutorial up on the Get Messy Art Journal website. If you want to see the whole thing, it does require a membership. Maybe you should consider joining? We have so much fun over there. Here’s a little peek at what I made:

My tutorial at Get Messy Art Journal. Join to get tutorials, prompts, community, and serious loads of fun.

I’m going to do a round-up of the Season of Kindness in a couple weeks, so check back for that!

Here are a few examples of things I’ve been working on.

Demonstrating how to art journal

Earlier this month I was invited to demonstrate art journaling at a local conference. I drastically underestimated the size of the conference, and the interest people would have in my demonstration! Holy moly people were into it! I had prepared 60 small handmade journals and at the end of the first day I only had 15 left. It was a great problem to have.

It was a great experience and I was so happy to connect with so many lovely people.

Four (lucky-duck) folks also won small mixed media pieces I had created for the event. This is one of them…

Almost too much fun

On top of all this, the kids had spring break, one of the kids had a birthday, AND there was a deadline for a huge work project. So much activity, so many good things, why must you happen all at once? Even if I have been using the wrong definition for theory of convergence, my meaning works to describe the layers upon layers of opportunity and possibility lately.

A wise man once said, “Enjoy the process”, and I’m going to try to do that in the moment, rather than being overly concerned with what develops out of it.

Hope you can do the same!

Trying a new thing: an art journal video for fall

23
Sep

Greetings! I’m trying a new thing and it’s kind of scary. I’ve created my first video of the process of creating an art journal page. The whole process is filmed, start to finish, and includes a few voice-overs (does anybody love the sound of their own voice? ‘Cause I sure don’t.).

The way I figure it, art journaling has become something I use every week — every day if I can — and maybe someone else will find it useful to their own journey in the world. Not all my art journaling is full of deep thoughts or mystical ah-ha! moments of illumination. Very few of them can be described that way. However, that doesn’t minimize the significance of it, nor does that mean it’s not still useful.

Much of my art journaling is simply appreciating things around me, or processing something that’s on my mind. There’s a quote that says writers get to taste life twice, and I believe that’s true for many art forms, including art journaling. So you can think of this as merely the process of enjoying the little details of your life, and doing so through smoothing paint on a page. I’m going to include what mine ended up looking like, but yours could look COMPLETELY different and that right there, folks, is the beauty of art journaling. You just can’t make it look wrong, and you have to love that. It’s got built-in accomplishment.

Completed fall-themed art journal page

Below the video, I’ve included the main materials I use. Please do not worry about having fancy stuff or getting anything special. You might have a little container of water colors around — use that. You might have highlighters or markers — use those. One of my favorite things is to scrape paint across a page using an old gift card; completely un-fancy. Start where you are because this is intended to be freeing and fun. And if you have time to come back and tell me about your experience, I’d love it!

Materials used:

Ballpoint pen

Pitt pen

Ceramcoat acrylic craft paint

Craftsmart acrylic paint

Liquitex heavy body paint

Palette knife

Oil pastel

Pages from an old book

Super-pointy platinum pen (not its official name but that’ll have to work)

Random paint brush, old gift card

Thanks so much for letting me share this with you, and for being a gentle space to try new things.

TC Larson

Stories and Mischief